Books

Chris Mooney has written a stinging indictment of the Republican Party’s attitudes toward science, focusing particularly on the manipulative and dismissive thinking and policies of the current administration. Even if only a part of what he says is true, he documents an appalling state of affairs.

In their book, Off Center, political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson use statistics to prove that the Republicans have defied political gravity. Instead of trimming their sails to the moderate breezes of the American middle, the Republicans have lurched far to the right. “According to the conventional wisdom about American politics, this shouldn’t be possible,” write Hacker and Pierson.